Annie Orr, 'pillar of righteousness,' dies

Robert Miller

Updated 9:44 pm, Tuesday, January 8, 2013

James Orr recalls stories about his mother, Annie Orr, underneath a family portrait in Annie's living room in Danbury. Annie, a prominent activist, died Monday. James' brother, Bill, is seen at left.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Annie Orr's children, from left, Matthew, Elizabeth, Bill, James and Jonathan sit beneath a family portrait in their mother's living room in Danbury. Photographed on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013. Annie, a prominent Danbury social activist, died Monday.
Photo: Jason Rearick

DANBURY -- Annie Orr, an indefatigable advocate for the city's poor, its hungry and homeless, died Monday at the age of 86.

"She was a pillar of righteousness," Rabbi Clifford Librach of the United Jewish Center said Tuesday.

"She reminded me a little bit of Dorothy Day," said the Rev. Laura Westby, who was pastor of First Congregational Church of Danbury when Orr ran the overflow shelter that serves the city's homeless during the winter.

"She thought what she thought, and said what she thought was right, and the consequences be damned," Westby said.

"She was a saint," said Carrie Amos, director of operations for the Jericho Partnership, a coalition of Christian organizations that helps the city's poor and homeless. "The least, the last, the forgotten -- those were the people she cared about."

Diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor only seven weeks ago, Orr died at her home Monday.

Her spirit was a constant source of inspiration in the city for nearly half a century.

"She was a terrific woman," said Mayor Mark Boughton. "She goes straight through the heavenly gates. No stopping."

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, Orr was a registered nurse who moved to Danbury in 1960 with her husband, Dr. Jack Orr, one of Danbury's first board-certified surgeons, and later chairman of surgery at Danbury Hospital.

Their five children -- Jonathan, Elizabeth, Matthew, William and James -- recalled their mother's accomplishments Tuesday afternoon. Annie Orr helped to found the city's first Planned Parenthood office; volunteered at Nellie's Attic, a local thrift shop; and was an American Red Cross volunteer, hurrying to the scene of disasters whenever needed.

When TWA Flight 800 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island in 1996, killing all 230 people on board, Orr went with the Red Cross to help. Her children said the authorities at the recovery site used a cooler Orr brought with her to store the jetliner's flight data recorder -- its black box.

In 2003, when Danbury's homeless shelters began to fill up night after night, Orr helped create the shelter at the First Congregation Church.

Westby said Orr met with church leaders and presented the shelter as a fait accompli -- the city needed a shelter, the church had space, the shelter would be there.

"It sounds so much like Annie, there's probably a certain amount of truth to it," Westby said.

"She was this beautiful, soft-spoken, white-haired women who giggled," Leopold said. "She was so different than what I expected."

That sense of propriety coexisted comfortably with the women who insisted that drug addicts and alcoholics needed a place to sleep on a cold night.

Westby said whenever the First Congregational Church held a social function, Orr would insist the church use its good linen, its good china, its good silver, even if she was the one who had to wash up.

"She'd say `Why have these things if you don't use them,'" her daughter Elizabeth said.

"She was very poised, very well read," Hines said. "She could have a conversation with a president or a pope. She could go sit on a curb and talk to someone who was homeless. She never saw people as a cause. She saw them as people."

Until the end of her life, she was a constant presence at the homeless shelter at the First Congregational Church. It could be a rough crowd, her family said, but its clients were protective of Annie.

"She would drive down the streets and drug addicts would wave and say `Hi Annie,'" her son William said.

Once, her family said, a man showed up at the shelter and asked Annie to store some boxes in her car. When the State Police showed up two hours later, Orr realized the boxes in her car held counterfeiter's engraving plates.

Orr, who said in 2008 she hoped to die with her boots on, came home from the hospital after her first tests for cancer in November, and went back to the shelter that night.

"On Thanksgiving, we had our Thanksgiving meal," her son James said. "Then, we went to the shelter."